Three new interesting non-fiction Star Trek books are headed your way in 2011 and 2012. Today CBS announced details and covers for the "Star Trek Book of Opposites," "Star Trek: Vault" and "Star Trek The Next Generation 365." Check it all out below .

3 new licensed non-fiction Star Trek books coming in 2011 & 2012

In preparation for this year’s BookExpo America (BEA) in New York City, CBS Consumer Products unveiled new publishing programs for their Star Trek and CSI franchises. CBS has linked up with publishers Abrams, Simon & Schuster and Quirk Books and promise Star Trek books for "fans of all ages," with behind-the-scenes access, trivia, facts and unusual information.

Here are the three Star Trek books:

Star Trek Book of Opposites (Quirk Books – September 2011)
The Star Trek Book of Opposites will make a great novelty gift for Star Trek fans of all ages, offering an exciting voyage of silly educational fun. The book will pair colorful photographs of Star Trek’s classic heroes and aliens to introduce the concept of opposites through immediate visual humor.

The Star Trek Vault (Abrams – October 2011) Charting the first 40 years of Star Trek, Star Trek Vault is the ultimate treasure trove of Star Trek imagery and memorabilia, sure to appeal to both the casual and die-hard fan. Author Scott Tipton has written numerous Star Trek comics. His award-winning website, comics101.com, was named one of Entertainment Weekly’s “100 Greatest Websites.”

Star Trek TNG 365 (Abrams – Fall 2012)
Star Trek: The Next Generation 365 is the definitive, authorized guide to the landmark television program that aired from 1987 through 1994. A visual celebration of the adventures of Captain Picard and his crew, the book covers the entire series in unprecedented detail, combining in-depth commentary, behind-the-scenes histories, and interviews with writers, cast, and crew with synopses for the series’ 178 episodes. (no image yet).

Pre-order now

The 2011 books are available for pre-order at Amazon.

Comments

Given you have the outline of the story now pretty much put to bed, can you please remind JJ that now would be a good time for you guys to go back and review the 3 Star Trek 2009-based follow-up novels by Alan Dean Foster and others that JJ put a hold on (because he thought they might interfere with the sequel story)? At this point, I think further delay with those novels would be unfortunate and unnecessary for both the writers and the fans.

Astonishing that this crap seems to sell while tech manuals and more *intelligent* literature like the companions, encyclopediae and such can’t find their way to the bookstores. I mean -behind-the-scenes Trek photos and memorabilia? Now that’s original…

The Star Trek Vault Book sounds interesting, as does TNG 365. Finally, some Trek books with potential, after a decade or more of total crap non-fiction Trek from Pocket and others. I would have preferred the Vault book to be focused only on TOS, rather than spread out among all Trek incarnations. This could lessen its appeal. Trek TOS 365 was, overall, a good book with some fun pix, but a very awkward size and hard to hold/read. Will TNG 365 make the same mistake?

TNG had 178 episodes. TOS had 79. I don’t know how they’re going to do the TNG one without enlarging the dimensions of the book. If they’re going to keep the same dimensions, its going to be one awkward book.

Also, I hope they do another Encyclopedia and Ships Of The Line books.

It’s just not the same looking something up online. Plus, I rather enjoy flipping through the pages of the Encyclopedia during a quiet evening at home. Much more “personal” if you will. Mike and Denise Okuda, and all of the others at Pocket Books, did a damn

Great news! Pocket dropped the ball, so other publishers are taking up the slack. TNG 365 will be a must have; the TOS book was very well done. I’ll wait on reviews for “The Vault”, but it sounds promising. “Opposites” has me scratching my head. Huh?

They should release and updated Star Trek Encyclopedia with additional info of “ST: Enterprise” “ST:Nemesis” & “ST:09″ (This time completely reedited and not just added as an appendix to the rest of the book like the las version)

They could make the book a more traditional shape. Otherwise, we’ll only get one photo per episode per page. TOS 365 had, for example, devoted eight pages to “City On The Edge Of Forever” alone. That would be four pages of text and four photos.

A TNG book done the same way would only allow one page of text and one photo per episode. That might be fine for “Shades Of Grey”, but wouldn’t be nearly sufficient for great episodes like “Best Of Both Worlds” and “All Good Things…”

I was disappointed in the TOS 365. It was supposed to be new, unpublished info. Yet it was just more rehashed stuff with bland photos and a short synopsis of the episode. I expected better from that project. If the Next Gen. 365 will only have 2 pages per episode (with one whole page devoted to a single picture as before) it will hardly be worth it.

You are wrong. TOS 365 had lots of new, interesting tidbits and very high quality photographs. Not only that: it was also great value for the price. Really, homeboy, could you do better?”

Don’t get me wrong….it was entertaining enough at a reasonable price. But it didn’t live up to the hype. Perhaps it was new to you, but I found little in that book that I hadn’t read elsewhere. Some of the photos were fine while others were just blurry screen captures. And some of those were poor representations of the episode in question.

Could I have done better? Sure. If I was in the book business. I certainly wouldn’t bill it as being all new and exclusive content like they did. It was a well intended project that missed the mark for some. There’s no way I see it being better with twice as many episodes of Next Generation squeezed into the same number of those awkward, tiny pages.